Sleeping Sickness
by Laudine
Summary: One-shot, character sketch/songfic to "Sleeping Sickness" by City and Colour. Isabel and Logan commiserate over beer and insomnia, post X2.


**Sleeping Sickness**

**Disclaimer: I do not own "X-Men," but Isabel Sayre/Sylphide is mine. This is a character sketch, and it takes place in the middle of my fic **_**Pandora's Box**_**, but after the **_**X2**_** movie. And yes, it's a songfic to City and Colour's "Sleeping Sickness."**

_I awoke only to find my lungs empty,  
and through the night so it seems I'm done breathing,  
and now my dreams are nothing like they were meant to be,  
and I'm breaking down,  
I think I'm breaking down._

_And I'm afraid to sleep because of what haunts me,  
such as li__ving with the uncertainty,  
that I__'ll never find the words to say which would__ completely explain,  
just how I'__m breaking down._

There were times when she couldn't sleep because she was too full of guilt. She felt guilt over Jean's death, over breaking Kaherdin's heart, over so many things. In two months she made it all the way through all three Brontë sisters' works and considered ordering the compilations of their childhood stories from Amazon. But then she found the collection of Sir Walter Scott in the library, and began _Ivanhoe_ that night.

She wondered if the telepaths' dreams were haunted with the words she read, the pictures she formed in her mind. Had Jean seen Thornfield looming before her as she rode in the carriage at Jane Eyre's side? Did Professor Xavier wonder who the strange knight errant was who also sought Friar Tuck's hospitality in the middle of the night? Or did they see Isabel's dreams, the lavenders and grays and shadows of the Twilight World? Or did they see the wishful images of the baby she had cast out of herself in a mess of blood and pain after eight weeks?

She should have intuited that there were designs on the school. She should have been here, with her saber in hand, poised to cut off their air, to attack, to lunge, to run them through as though she were D'Artagnan. Perhaps then they would have remained safe, perhaps then Jean would not have died alone in the cold, unforgiving waters of Alkalai Lake. Jean, who had done so much for her, who had done so much for everyone, who in the end gave her life for all of them instead of being the eternal damsel in distress, the eternal princess in the tower while Isabel, Snow White the Vigilante, the Wolverine called her, could hold her own in hand-to-hand combat even if her powers failed her.

And then what? Would Professor Xavier have inadvertently killed them all at that Jason Stryker's whisper? Would she have died in Kaherdin's arms like a martyred saint? Would she have been the second supposed love he had lost? He would have been a cursed man, a haunted man; first Azaliz, then Isabel. He would have gone away on some distant, romantic quest to find something forever lost and never return to Brocéliande?

_Things are as they are because that is how it is supposed to be._

Azaliz. To hear the gentle whisper of that in her heart…

But it was still so hard to believe!

-------------

_Someone come and,  
someone come and save my life.  
Maybe I'll sleep when I am dead,  
but now it's like the night is taking sides.  
And all the worries that occupy the back of my mind,  
could it be this misery will suffice?_

Since the return from Alkalai Lake, his nightmares had become worse. Seeing the place, seeing the actual instruments, killing the crazy bitch with the adamantium nails—all of these things had sparked memories long ago locked away. They had begun to string themselves together, one by one, but some fragments were coherent and some were not. He had sat in on the sessions with the whack-job Snow White as Professor Xavier tried to retrieve the memories and imprints the spirit of Azaliz had left within her mind, but there hadn't been much to go on with that.

I've become the simple souvenir of someone's kill,  
and like the sea I'm constantly changing from calm to ill,  
madness fills my heart and soul,  
as if the great divide could swallow me whole,  
oh how I'm breaking down.

He sat up and rubbed his eyes. There were times when he dreamt of Jean, alone and cold in a watery grave even though a headstone had been put up for her. They had no body, no concrete evidence of her death, and that was what irked Logan the most. She had relinquished everything, her life, her future, her entire being, so that they might escape. And they came back with Snow-White-Glowing-in-the-Fucking-Moonlight-Vigilante, who left the Crazy Club and came back to the X-Men. Apparently she was like Storm in some respects and had had to leave the X-Men to spend time with the family in some commune to control some power or another. And then she'd come to the U.S. with the Crazy Club once she'd heard Professor Xavier's telepathic distress call.

His body craved alcohol and he put on a t-shirt and his worn sneakers and drove his used Jeep Cherokee to the closest liquor store for a twelve-pack of Molson Canadian. The clerk didn't even bother to look at him askance; Logan's late-night booze runs were a regular occurrence. It was sneaking the booze into the Institute that was the problem. He parked his Jeep by Snow White's sleek ice blue Mercury Mariner. When he opened the door to the kitchen, he took a preliminary sniff to make sure that no one was in there. No one. He was golden.

He entered the kitchen only to see the light on in the adult rec room. Shit. Snow White was up reading some book or another. With his luck, she'd run up and tell Professor Xavier and be kicked out this time. Oh, well, no worries. He'd planned on leaving this kum-ba-ya funny farm anyway. Keep moving, keep fighting, keep looking until he found whatever it was he was looking for…

"Hello, Logan," Isabel said quietly.

Fuck.

"You can come in and sit down, you know," she went on.

Christ save him now…

"Do you think I'm going to tell anyone? Just shut the door when you bring your beverage of choice in."

"How'd you know?" he asked her as he popped out a claw to tear open the cardboard packaging and as he took out a bottle and twisted the cap off.

She put down _Ivanhoe_ and smiled mischievously. "You dropped some caps under the couch. Marie found them when I was in here and swore me to secrecy."

"Ya didn't tell?"

"You're still here, aren't you?" That crooked smile was annoyingly becoming on her.

"Point taken." He gestured to the package. "Have a few on me."

"Thank you." She gracefully pulled one out with a slim, manicured hand and twisted the cap off. She took a sip and turned up her nose. "I'm sorry. I've been so used to wine, mead on some occasions."

"Mead?"

"In the Forest of Arden the drink of choice is mead. It's in England, so what can anyone say? But some in Brocéliande drank mead, just not me." She shrugged. "Anyhow, I keep my wine in Professor Xavier's cellar. It's refrigerated and everything…it's _amazing_. We can put your beer down there. Jean and Scott even have a liquor stash down there. I have a key; we can take it down later…"

"So Scott ain't no goody two shoes?" he laughed.

"Was he ever? He might talk a lot about teamwork and following the rules and everything like that, but there are some rules he secretly breaks. We all break some rules," she observed dryly.

"Ain't that the truth," he muttered.

-------------

_Someone come and,  
someone come and save my life.  
Maybe I'll sleep when I am dead,  
but now it's like the night is taking sides.  
And all the worries that occupy the back of my mind,  
could it be this misery will suffice?_

Oh we're alive.

She found her conversations with him to be the one thing that relieved her guilty conscience. She had been right to assume that he had not only cared for Jean Grey deeply, but that he had been in love with her. _Jean, Jean the roses are red…Jean would do best to keep her heart where it is instead of letting it wander…_

_Oh, Jean, I'm so sorry…_ How could she judge Jean when she had done the same thing to Kaherdin, had unintentionally given him that hope, lit that fire within him and helped him to live again? Had Jean done the same thing for this man, this lone wolf in a man's body, this drifter with no purpose, this square peg in a round hole? Yes…and she had broken his heart when she could not love him fully, when she had chosen…

At least Kaherdin had found love with young Oralie; at least he had been able to find some kind of happiness. The third time was the charm, wasn't it?

_You'll do nothing but break hearts, Isabel, and you will end up broken in the end if you keep at it._ Oh, Professor, how right you were!

There were times when Scott would stumble in from a drunken night, when Isabel could see the lights of the departing taxi as it circled down the driveway toward the road, and she could see the jealousy in his eyes when he would come upon her and Logan talking of everything and nothing just like they were old friends. The truth was, Scott missed Jean and the intricacies of their relationship, their psychic bond. _And what's Isabel? Nothing but some airy fairy nutjob…Two nutjobs together…_

Two sleepy people unable to sleep, tormented by what caused them guilt, what they kept pushed back in the corners of their minds during the day but which came out untamed at night. The heartbroken and the heartbreaker, the unrequited lover and the beloved who could not return the feelings of another unrequited lover.

"At least misery has company," Logan said, opening another beer and turning on the late-night repeat of _Sports Center_.

Yes, at least they could be sad and guilty and commiserate with each other on it. They could revel in the commonality of their lots, and spend their waking hours with some semblance of normalcy.

Such was the irony of life!

_Someone come and,  
someone come and save my life.  
Someone come and,  
someone come and save my life.  
Someone come and,  
someone come and save my life._

Could it be this misery will suffice?


End file.
